History of Plaza Lucchesi

While Leonardo da Vinci is known by all to be the painter of the Mona Lisa, perhaps not everyone is aware that at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries he carried out numerous studies and measurements along the course of the River Arno to build a navigable canal which would connect Florence with its neighbours Prato, Pistoia and Serravalle. During the era of his observations, the Lungarno della Zecca Vecchia, where today the Plaza Hotel Lucchesi is located, didn’t yet exist: in its place stood rather the city walls.
The site where the hotel would be built was located next to the fields of the Hospital of SS Philip and Jacob. The same structure was also known as “Hospital of the Small Tower” because here stood several tall and narrow towers facing the Arno, or again as “Hospital of the Stump”, from the hollow in the tree trunk where the faithful would leave alms for the poor...